I have a text on Emaar, the rise of freehold, and tapestries of domesticity in Dubai in this gorgeously wallpapered book. Edited by space caviar and out Oct 2014 from Lars Müller, it features contributions from Aristide Antonas, Gabrielle Brainard and Jacob Reidel, Keller Easterling, Ignacio González Galán, Joseph Grima, Hilde Heynen, Dan Hill, Sam Jacob, Alexandra Lange, Justin McGuirk, Joanne McNeil, Alessandro Mendini, Jonathan Olivares, Marina Otero Verzier, Beatriz Preciado, Anna Puigjaner, Catharine Rossi, Andreas Ruby, Malkit Shoshan, and Bruce Sterling
Those who aren’t might share partitioned flats where a whole family occupies one room, or be ‘bedspacers,’ renting just a bed in a hostel-style room. In certain areas of Dubai, it’s not unusual to see flyers advertising these kinds of openings, with preferrence articulated not only by nationality, but often by religion and subcommunity. Wanted: Christian Keralite bachelor, Sri Lankan family, Kabayan executive girls, and so on. Sometimes these demographics map onto entire neighbourhoods. Jaffliya, where I used to live, was once heavily Pakistani and is now overwhelmingly Pinoy in the space of about seven years. There’s a law on the books that disallows unmarried men—”bachelors”—living together, but it is only ever enforced in the densely packed middle and lower-middle class areas. They exist in direct contrast to the spacious newer neighbourhoods being carved out of the desert, populated almost exclusively by Emiratis thanks to governmental land grants.